Shotgun wedding season

The election is just weeks away, and that means an endless stream of debates, fundraisers — and weddings. Same-sex couples are already flooding into City Hall just in case Prop. 8 makes future marriages illegal, and city leaders are bracing for a full-scale deluge of “I Do’s” like the one they saw in June.

Nathan Ballard, press secretary for Mayor Gavin Newsom, said plans are underway to open up the North Light Court again to allow for hundreds of couples to be married every day if enough sign up. “We’ll be ready for whoever walks through the door,” he said.

The Chronicle

The line to get into City Hall the last time around.

Currently, County Clerk Karen Hong is processing 80 marriage licenses a day, up from the typical pace of 42. She’s almost out of the little purple marriage handbooks provided by the state called “Your Future Together” and has had to order more. She got 10,000 of them in January, and they’re supposed to last the whole year.

Looking a bit frazzled, she reminded people that they can get married anywhere in California – not just in San Francisco. “There are 57 other counties!” she said.

Try telling that to Robert Balthazor and Kevin Caples, a Sacramento couple for 25 years who came to San Francisco in tuxes today to make it official. They wanted to marry at “ground zero” for same-sex weddings and to make sure they did it before Election Day. And then it was off to the Cliff House, Balthazor said, for “a long lunch and lots of champagne.”